While painting on location in one of her family’s hayfields, Jessie absentmindedly brushes a note of turquoise onto the canvas. Curious about what added the lovely spot of color, the artist walks over to discover a tennis shoe. The mate is still on the foot of a dying Native American girl crammed between the hay bales.
The story becomes more personal when old flame, Sheriff Russell Bonham, reveals that Amber Reynolds, a grad student writing a thesis for her art history major, was attacked while on her way to speak to Jessie’s family about two missing Thomas Moran masterpieces worth millions. The paintings disappeared nearly a hundred years ago from St. Benedict’s Mission School. Right after the unsolved murder of Jessie’s great aunt Kate.